Underdonk

press release

March 29, 2014-April 28, 2014

Palimpsest: noun

noun: palimpsest; plural noun: palimpsests

1. a manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.

For both Lauren Clay and Inna Babaeva, a palimpsest becomes an appropriate metaphor for describing the process by which their artworks accumulate additional meanings by a semi-erasure of seemingly finite parameters; for Clay, art history becomes a subject, playfully personified, from which a new-and arguably more vibrant-character emerges to self consciously eradicate its predecessor. Babaeva draws from her own art history so that forms, re-animated by the artist, become enablers of a simultaneous reincarnation and self-effacement, a seemingly paradoxical cycle that suggests no end.

For Clay, an existing composition becomes a parameter for creating an object. The object, fat with self-indulgence, exists in the same space as the body. An iconic form becomes a character that plays out narratives of personal and existential anxiety. Light and form create a visual cadence from which a pattern emerges. Together, these dictate the image, which shifts and changes with the light. The original composition is simultaneously present and absent. Overtly physical, the surface, texture accumulates through the act of making.

For the work in this show, Babaeva recycles her sculptures without obliterating them. The original work exists in several incarnations simultaneously – original and derivative. The overtly material ecto-tropic, plasma-like matter emerging from a household metal pail is being transformed and dematerialized into the two-dimensional images of itself. It further dissipates into its own reflection, and that reflection vanishes in the absence of light.

Inna Babaeva’s work has been exhibited at Storefront Ten Eyck, Brooklyn; Anna Kustera Gallery, New York; Kidd Yellin Gallery, Brooklyn; Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami. Her art has been reviewed by ARTnews, Sleek Magazine (Berlin), We Heart Magazine (London), Artnet Magazine. Inna lives and works in New York City.

Lauren Clay has had solo exhibitions at Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; and Tilt Gallery and Project Space, Portland, OR. Group exhibitions include Abrons Art Center, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and at The Shelburne Museum, VT. Awards include the Virginia Museum of Fine Art Fellowship. Her work has been discussed in The New York Times, Art in America, Beautiful/Decay, and The Washington Post. Lauren lives and works in Brooklyn.